A Spooky Scary Post... When Barbara Amiel Meets Imelda: aka A Sheena Is Born

I'm Hiding...In the Closet....

Whoa baby.

The day started much like every other day on every other business trip. The clock radio would softly begin to play music followed a few minutes later by the piercing, insistent alarm on her Blackberry.

She didn't linger, there was much to be done. A full agenda included meeting clients, creating powerpoint presentations, answering an endless stream of emails and preparing telephone briefings for her boss back home in Toronto.

The pace was exhausting, but this was the way she liked it- hard, fast, then followed by a couple days of downtime to enjoy the finer things in life. She fancied herself as a bit of a gourmand. A bon vivant. A collector of finely-crafted things and finely-cultivated friendships.

She'd been four days on the road already- Charlotte, Columbia, Tallahassee, and she was starting to get tired. But, as was her habit, she had arranged her travels with a mental carrot at the end. This was Atlanta, home city to her friend "Cheek."

Tonight, pleasure would follow business as she met up with her "sistah" for dinner, drinks and good conversation. There, frustrations would be vented, secrets would be shared and tears of laughter would flow from recounting her latest romantic adventures and sarcastic observations.

It wasn't quite daybreak as she left the hotel. Breakfast was a hasty, take-out wrap from 711, but as she stepped onto the sidewalk, the display window of a nearby shoe store caught her eye.

Manolo Blahniks, Jimmy Choo, Kurt Geiger. "Very nice," she thought to herself, "but who can afford that shit?" Her eyes studied the tags as she contemplated spending her entire mortgage payment on new footwear.

"You.....like....."

The words were barely recognizable. The voice was rasping, tortured, as if produced from vocal cords reconstructed by some amateur Frankenstein using recycled cat gut.

Sheena looked up to see the bent, shadowy figure peering cautiously from a narrow alleyway. Who or what was in that shadow was not immediately obvious. There was mostly hoodie or a cloak of some sort, but it appeared to be about six or eight sizes too large for the person or thing wearing it.

"Wear" wasn't quite the correct word. Occupying, perhaps. Or being victimized. Because the garment might have been some sort of giant amoeba, busy digesting the poor creature trapped inside.

Americans.... Sheena thought. Why can't they get a rudimentary health care system and get the fucking lepers off the streets?

"You...like...the...shoes?" croaked the voice under the hood. A very bony finger beckoned from under the robe.

Click on the link to find out how it ends..